[Foundation-l] Wikisource Licence Terms

Fri Nov 25 20:31:27 UTC 2005

Hoi,
I am very much interested in licenses as the Ultimate Wiktionary but 
also Wikidata will have this as an important aspect. When Ultimate 
Wiktionary becomes a runaway success as I hope it will be, the argument 
may become less relevant. With Wikidata there will be data that may come 
from many sources and we will want to use that in our projects. Just by 
using it in one project you do not want to change the license of the 
data that comes from a Wikidata source. Another application that I 
foresee is that we will get permission to use data that is hosted 
elsewhere .. How to use that within a mediawiki framework ..

Anyway, you guessed it I really want to be in on a discussion of 
licenses and Mediawiki and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,
  GerardM

Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> How can we work on this together ?
>
> I would be very happy to set up a session to discuss about it on IRC 
> and on Skype.
>
> For example, who would be available next Sunday?
>
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
>
> David Newton wrote:
>> As has become apparent recently there is considerable confusion
>> possible when reading the text of the Wikisource copyright page at
>> [[Wikisource: Copyright]]. It is not clear whether only GFDL works,
>> GFDL-compatible works and public domain works can be posted at the
>> site, or whether any licence that allows relatively free reproduction
>> can be used. We need this situation cleared up. I am therefore
>> proposing to re-write the offending bits of the Wikisource copyright
>> page to remove the ambiguity.
>>
>> Since this is a serious step for the project I thought it sensible to
>> post here and see what the level of agreement is with what I am
>> proposing to do. I will also post an equivalent message to the
>> Scriptorium.
>>
>> What I am proposing to do is to re-word the licensing page to make it
>> clear that the documents themselves are licensed separately from the
>> content of the site. That means that things on talk pages, the
>> Scriptorium, Community Portal and similar will be under the GFDL as
>> per Wikipedia. However, the documents themselves will be licensed
>> according to conditions appropriate to their source. That means that
>> works that are public domain in the United States should be noted as
>> such with a template at the top or bottom of the page, whichever is
>> felt most appropriate. It means that works that carry different
>> licensing conditions from the GFDL and that have licences that are
>> incompatible with the GFDL can be noted as such.
>>
>> Such a step will open up Wikisource to a large number of possibilities
>> of hosting that are currently not open and it will also clear up a
>> considerable amount of confusion. What do you think?
>>
>> David Newton
>>
>